Quotes

It's Messiaen's Turangalila Symphony I'm really looking forward to. Simon Rattle does it perfectly: he understands its primal rhythmic life force, and he and the wonderful Berliners make it a sheer riot of orchestral colour.

All roads for me lead back to Mozart. In his tragically short life, he breathed new life, fire and meaning into every form of music that existed in his time.

Purpose is what gives life a meaning.

It is a thoroughly anti-christian doctrine that the Spirit of God, and therefore the life and governing power of the Church, resides in the ministry, to the exclusion of the people.

The literature of the inner life is very largely a record of struggle with the inordinate passions of the social self.

There is no way to penetrate the surface of life but by attacking it earnestly at a particular point.

The idea that seeing life means going from place to place and doing a great variety of obvious things is an illusion natural to dull minds.

We have no higher life that is really apart from other people. It is by imagining them that our personality is built up; to be without the power of imagining them is to be a low-grade idiot.

The need to exert power, when thwarted in the open fields of life, is the more likely to assert itself in trifles.

There can be nothing exclusive about substantial art. It comes directly out of the heart of the experience of life and thinking about life and living life.

Achieve success in any area of life by identifying the optimum strategies and repeating them until they become habits.

If literary terms were about artistic merit and not the rules of convenience, about achievement and not safety, the term 'realism' would be an honorary one, conferred only on work that actually builds unsentimental reality on the page, that matches the complexity of life with an equally rich arrangement in language.

There is more to be pondered in the grain and texture of life than traditional fiction allows. The work of essayists is vital precisely because it permits and encourages self-knowledge in a way that is less indirect than fiction, more open and speculative.

Because of the earlier loss of the two elder siblings, my brother and I lived a very pampered and protected life. Nursemaids kept constant watch. With my parents busy at dinner parties and social events, we only met them as if for a daily royal audience.

With anything you do in life, there are days where you're worn out and you don't want to do it for a second.

Quality of life actually begins at home - it's in your street, around your community.

I'm not someone who dwells upon past events, taking the view that life is too short.

I'm a lifelong believer in trade unionism.

It has been the greatest privilege of my adult and public life to have served, for 32 years, as the Member of Parliament for our local Highlands and Islands communities.

Gratification and happiness are becoming important measures of our quality of life.

Political parties need to look at the different kinds of support that people may need, suited to their way of life, and provide cost-effective solutions.

New Labour needs to realise that family life and the way we raise our children are private matters.

My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.

I object to people running down the future. I am going to live all the rest of my life there.

I don't want to dedicate my life to getting publicity.